There are not a lot of books about women in space! Roughly 100 women have been there (out of roughly 700 total—roughly because there is disagreement on where “space” begins). Now compare that to the roughly 8 billion of us alive today. And yet, astronauts loom large in our collective imagination.
To the Moon and Back, my debut novel, is about the singular dream of Steph Harper: to become the first Cherokee astronaut, no matter what. But over my own more than decade writing this novel—while reading all the space books I could find—stories of people on earth loom large.
Steph’s story isn’t hers alone. It’s about the complex women she might leave behind—a celebrity activist younger sister, an ex-Mormon college girlfriend, and a devoted mother harboring a painful secret. To the Moon and Back is, at its heart, the story of one astronaut’s love for life on earth.
To love and understand space, I no longer think of it as a question of just women in space – but also women and space. How, in literature and in life, does space touch us? What does that touch teach us about ourselves and our world?
I read books about girls and women who are scientists and stargazers. Who lay awake worried about extraterrestrial life, or about the future of life on our own planet. I wondered, how does space challenge our understanding of time and…well…space? What does it say about our responsibility to this planet, and to one another?
In compiling this list, I hope to share not just books about women astronauts, but books about what space might mean to women on earth.
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
ATMOSPHERE follows Joan Goodwin, a woman with a quiet life as a professor of physics and astronomy in 1980s Texas. Joan has always been obsessed with the stars, but her dream becomes suddenly possible when NASA opens its space shuttle program to women.
Joan beats out thousands of hopeful astronauts and begins her training at Johnson Space Center. There she finds new friends, new experiences, and Vanessa Ford—an aeronautical engineer who makes Joan question who she is and what she is willing to sacrifice under pressure. This is a heartfelt and propulsive story about love and ambition. I flew through it!
Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin
Is the astronaut at the center of CELESTIAL LIGHTS a woman? No! And yet – in my eyes, no astronaut novel is worth its salt without something to say about life on the ground. Here, in the story of not only an astronaut but also his scientist wife, CELESTIAL LIGHTS shines.
CELESTIAL LIGHTS takes us from the English village childhood of Oliver Ines, to years in university in London, to a career in a submarine with the Royal Navy. Oliver falls in love with his brilliant friend, Philly. Philly, I should say, is a woman we have the pleasure of meeting as a child scientist-in-the-making—before we follow her into her career in ecology.
When Oliver is offered the chance of a lifetime – to become an astronaut, and travel to Europa during a mission in space that will last more than a decade – Oliver says yes. In that choice, he abandons his wife and child. It’s a world-shattering decision, one that changes the shape of Philly’s life and ambitions every bit as much as Oliver’s, and the story honors that. CELESTIAL LIGHTS is an unforgettable and breathtaking story, about what we owe ourselves and the people we love.
Where to begin with BEINGS, a novel that holds three intertwined stories, that links those stories across vastly different lives, and has so much to say about the truth and power of story itself?
Starting in 1961, we follow the based-on-true-life story of an interracial couple who publicly share their experience of being abducted by aliens. In a second thread, an emerging and ambitious science fiction writer navigates life as a lesbian in a repressive time—and the surprise and joy of finding an underground community. Meanwhile, in a third thread, an archivist in the present day becomes obsessed with those two stories, all while trying to understand a forgotten and unexplained childhood encounter of their own.
This novel is an extraordinary and fascinating undertaking, one that brilliantly takes on questions of fact, fiction, and what we leave behind.
The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva
In March 1980, Carol Girard is struggling postpartum in a small town in the Adirondacks. Lights flash on and off across the night sky. They are a message from intelligent life on another planet, eleven light-years away.
THE RADIANT DARK is the sweeping, daring, and hopeful story of one family over fifty years, as they contend with the knowledge that they are not alone. Carol, searching for greater meaning, inches towards a cult that offers answers in a changed world. Her wildly ambitious daughter chases a childhood dream not only to become a scientist, but to directly communicate with the extraterrestrial beings. Meanwhile, in a world increasingly attentive to outer space, Carol’s son Michael becomes ever more devoted to the earth and its well-being. I may never forget the ending of this book, both where it took this family and the unexpected future it imagines for us all.
Lenny Winters is fifteen years old, living with her mother and stepfather on a houseboat off the coast of Washington. Her world is exceptionally small, but it’s also hopeful and expansive—she has a dream of becoming an astronomer, and a mother who takes her out to see the stars.
After Lenny’s mother’s sudden and tragic death, Lenny is thrown into a new life at Blanchard, an elite boarding school where she knows no one. Blanchard has its own language of wealth and power that is both terrifying and intriguing to Lenny. It is also home to the Pascalianum Club, a secret society that pulls Lenny towards real danger, and makes her question how far she might go to belong.
Of all the space books on this list, NIGHT OBJECTS is the most earthbound. But what it may lack in astronauts and aliens it gives—a hundred times over!—in what space really is for most of us.
Lenny is a young person, trying to understand her place in the world through tremendous grief and change. The night sky is a constant. For Lenny it’s a question, an answer, a link to who she was and who she might grow up to be. Also, for Lenny, it is a tie to her mother. This is a space book for people who will never go to space, but may find a kind of home there anyway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eliana Ramage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Vermont Studio Center. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family. To the Moon and Back is her first novel.